Tag Archives: Melissa Moschitto

Listen in as performer Mariah Freda & director/”script assembler” Melissa Moschitto of The Anthropologists‘ new show Artemisia’s Intent discuss the company’s approach to devising, the well-meaning wish of “break a frame,” skirts from tablecloths, working from found texts, activating original art, and the resonance of 17th Century baroque painting with #MeToo.

“…pressing up these two points in time, with 400 years in between them, there’s actually still a lot with us, and we’re trying to point that out, and be, like, ‘now what?’ Let’s move forward from that…”

But as the poster, at left, for The Anthropologists’No Man’s Land attests, fantasy endings like this can become something else entirely once your eyes are opened to the realities of life in the 21st Century. The very real, very complicated issues of colonialism, racism, capitalism, gender, and more come to the fore of the fairy tale in this devised show, currently playing at TheaterLab in Manhattan.

Listen in as director/writer Melissa Moschitto, assistant director/assistant producer Alex Randrup, producer Malini Singh McDonald, and actors Brian Demar Jones, Jean Goto, Mariah Freda, and Michael Ables discuss their devising process, a nice suit that doesn’t quite fit you, finding a way to get 99.9% of what you want while producing without an off-Broadway budget, and finding the play through failing to find the way to tell the story.

“…those are the parts that resonate the most, when suddenly we’re just having a conversation. And it allows you to kind of have those thoughts performed for you by people…I feel like a lot of people, when it comes to the issues of this country […] you start just echoing the same thoughts, the first round of arguments. And I think what’s so great about this show is that it lets you kind of get past that…”